Examples of Bystander Syndrome depicted in Anime and Manga.
- Invoked in the Adventures of the Little Koala's episode "The Koala Bear Gang". A pair of masked thieves race through the village with Roobear and Floppy in hot pursuit, while the police officers who are supposed to be on duty are nowhere to be found. However, the thieves don't seem to have actually stolen anything, and are strangely concerned for Roobear and Floppy's safety as they pursue them... because the "thieves" are the police officers, and the "theft" was an experiment to see if any villagers would remain apathetic in the event of a real crime.
- Ah! My Goddess had a few instances when passerby decide to ignore the heroes' home because they were used to strange happenings there and didn't want to get involved.
- Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest: Hajime and Yue often ignore problems that they feel don't concern them. For example, Shea begs them for help as she's being attacked by a two-headed dinosaur, but they brush her off and only kill the dinosaur when it attacks them. Shea then begs them to help liberate her village, but they tell her to get lost and beat her up when she persists. It is only when they realize she has the power to see the future that they decide she would be useful and help her. Later, Hajime often ignores people in trouble and has to be persuaded by his harem members to help.
- Bleach:
- When Rukia is sentenced to be executed by the Sokyoku for sharing her powers with a human, most of the Captains and Lieutenants take firm, if differing stances about it. Kenpachi and Mayuri do not; they couldn't care less either way, and their subordinates follow suit for the most part. When Ichigo and his friends infiltrate Soul Society to rescue her, they only bother getting involved because Kenpachi thinks Ichigo might give him a good fight and Mayuri is interested in Orihime's power.
- The Royal Guard aka Squad Zero show up only after the Vandenreich decimated Soul Society. When asked why they didn't help even though they were aware of the situation, they flat out state that their only concern is guarding the Soul King, and that protecting Soul Society is the Gotei 13's responsibility, not theirs. The only reason why they are intervening now is because the Vandenreich proved themselves to be a threat significant enough to threaten the Soul King.
- In A Certain Magical Index and A Certain Scientific Railgun, many people are like this. In episode 5 of Railgun, Uiharu begs for help as a bank robber mercilessly beats up Kuroko, but the people just walk past her. Fortunately, Mikoto answers her plea. Silvia does not care about any matter that doesn't directly concern her, and gets irritated whenever Ollerus helps people and drags her into it. Many of the good guys, like the members of Necessarius, seem to only do good if the problem directly concerns them, and they just don't get why The Hero Touma helps anybody in trouble even if he won't get any benefit from doing so.
- Code Geass: In the first episode, a truck crashes and everyone stands around taking photos and occasionally talking about how "someone" should call somebody. Lelouch (after contemptuously lampshading the way other people fall for this trope) actually runs up to the truck to see if anyone needs help. This is Foreshadowing for one of the defining aspects of his character; his absolute refusal to think it's somebody else's problem if there's something he can do. However, the rest of the series does not shy away from showing how much damage this otherwise admirable trait can cause, as Lelouch's refusal to accept a Crapsack World and his resistance against it gets lots of people killed.
- Furthermore, he subverts the trope in Episode 9 to show that he is not too reckless. When Kallen tries to intervene when a group of bullies pick on an Eleven, Lelouch steps in with a more subtle approach by using his Geass on them. He stopped her not because of apathy but her form of intervention would only cause problems for the victim later since he became an Honorary Britannian.
- Enforced by the powers-that-be of Darwin's Game. Whenever a game starts, they send a signal that affects every non-player in the area within several hundred meters which leaves them in a trance and unaware of anything happening. Move far away enough from the starting point though and a player can encounter unaffected people, which was how Kaname managed to get a police officer's help early on since he was in a moving train. For larger events, the range limit is increased to the entire event area and perhaps beyond and hypnotises all non-players into leaving the area.
- In Death Parade, a detective turned vigilante refuses to lift a finger to help when he finds crimes in progress. As he callously explains to the brother of a woman whose rape he witnessed but didn't stop, his job is not to help people, but to punish the guilty for their crimes, and there can't be a crime without a victim. He seeks out and kills the criminals afterwards. He got his Karmic Death when sneaking into the rapist's apartment to kill him. The brother got there first and killed the rapist, then killed him, thinking he was the rapist's friend.
- While Dragon Ball Z's Vegeta isn't usually like this, he sits out the fight in Dragon Ball Z: Wrath of the Dragon until the villain crushes his house.
- In the climax of episode 22 of Excel♡Saga, the Pentagon is concerned about the space debris heading towards Earth, but when they're informed it's merely heading towards F City, they immediately dismiss it: "That's Japan's problem."
- In Fairy Tail, when Jackal, one of the many villains capable of actually killing another character, comes to assassinate a former councilor, just about no one cares. He sets explosions off all over the town just to piss the heroes off, and when his target runs away in the next chapter, it can be seen that no one did anything.
- In The Familiar of Zero, Agnes always stoically ignores Saito's plight whenever Louise angrily punishes him for his Not What It Looks Like moments with other girls, even if she knows for a fact he's innocent.
- Gantz opens with people in a subway watching a drunken hobo fall onto the tracks, and nobody lifting a finger to help, even though they knew the hobo could be killed by a train. One bystander, Kato, decides to jump in and help, with his friend Kurono reluctantly helping. They manage to save the hobo, but get hit by a train themselves for their trouble.
- In Is This A Zombie?, Ariel is an extremely powerful magic user, fully capable of curb-stomping nearly any Big Bad. Unfortunately, if a matter doesn't concern her students, she doesn't care about it. When Ayumu tries to call her out on this, she just sets him on fire for his insolence and leaves.
- Life with an Ordinary Guy who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout: Hinata and Jinguuji are walking down the road when they spot the Elf Chieftess bound and gagged in a passing carriage. They ignore it. This decision bites them in the butt, because if they stopped the carriage, they would have known that the next town kidnaps girls as human sacrifices, leading to Hinata getting kidnapped too.
- Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam Day After Tomorrow: Prior to his time in Karaba, Hayato attempted this, in part to keep his family safe and out of the belief that his war's over, despite being aware of the Federation's festering corruption.
- My Hero Academia:
- Enforced legally. In a world where Everyone Is a Super, only heroes with licenses are authorized to use their abilities to help people. Anybody else who does is either a villain or an unlawful vigilante, so most people seek to stay out of trouble. Quite a few villains are incredibly bitter about this attitude.
- Tomura Shigaraki, who despite being a child destitute on the streets and clearly in need of help no one was willing (it didn't help that they were pretending not to notice him due to his scary appearance)...and the one that did was All for One.
- Because he attempted and failed to avert this trope, leading to a victim being injured, Danjuro Tobita (a struggling student who would later become the villain Gentle Criminal) suffered massive legal ramifications, was kicked out by his parents, and expelled from his hero school, losing any chance at becoming a licensed hero. And then he falls into despair and becomes a villain when he reunites with his old classmates who became successful heroes, only for them to reveal that they've forgotten about him.
- It gets so bad that, when Paranormal Liberation War causes various heroes to either be killed or retire, the civilians throw a fit at those who are still trying to protect everyone, going so far as to try and throw Deku out of UA High in the fear the villains will come after them. It takes Uraraka and a civilian who was saved by Deku to convince them to stop it.
- Enforced in My New Devil Wife, the guild staff, despite being very, very fond of the protagonist, Theo, can do nothing in response to seeing him abused, bullied, and exploited by his fellow mercenaries since the rules expressly forbid them from interfering, to their ire. All the receptionists can do is glare at the offenders, which the offenders ignore.
- The Mysterious Cities of Gold: Mendoza spots a local being chased by soldiers right when he's about to board a ship. The captain's ship advises him against getting involved because Mendoza is a wanted man. Mendoza is willing to follow his advice until he realizes the man whom the soldiers are chasing is a friend of his, so he goes to his rescue. The captain remains unfazed, though, and orders to set sail as scheduled.
- Invoked by Fate in Negima! Magister Negi Magi, when he tries to convince Negi not to interfere with his plans to destroy the Magic World. His argument was "This isn't your world, it's just a fantasy, and you really shouldn't interfere in its affairs." This is before Negi discovers who his mother is.
- One Piece:
- The Navy seems to have this action towards slavery. Despite it being illegal in the series, they do nothing to help stop it or even help protect any slaves that come to them. If it is a World Noble's slave, they are even tasked to get them back. No Navy officer has been shown to have a problem with this.
- For many years, the people of Wano Country has kept themselves isolated from the outside world, ignoring several major events such as the Paramount War.
- Pokémon Adventures: Ruby says he doesn't care about Team Aqua and Magma's plans that endanger the Hoenn Region, as he's from Johto and only came to Hoenn to participate in Pokemon Contests. Several characters, especially Sapphire, call him out on this, and he eventually decides to help.
- Happens on a mass scale in Psycho-Pass when a man beats a woman to death in broad daylight with hundreds of witnesses, and not a single person does anything to intervene. This was done as part of a demonstration to show that people have become so accustomed to the Sibyl System managing their lives that they no longer have any ability to do so themselves - many of the onlookers are so used to depending on Sibyl to shield them from danger and violence that they simply can't comprehend what they're watching.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Kyuubey only cares about things related to his mission, and is perfectly willing to let the Earth get destroyed.
- Rurouni Kenshin: Kenshin's master Seijuro Hiko taught Kenshin everything he knows about swordsmanship and is strong enough to curbstomp every other fighter in the manga. Unfortunately (or fortunately, for the antagonists) he's just too apathetic and antisocial to be bothered to get involved. He does give Kenshin a break once, though. Justified in that one of the core tenets of his school of swordsmanship is that its practitioners shouldn't get involved in wider political affairs due to the tendency of absurdly skilled warriors to singlehandedly influence the course of history, especially during times of political unrest.
- Subverted in Codename: Sailor V (the manga of which Sailor Moon was spun off from): Artemis often questions Minako's Chronic Hero Syndrome, but it's because of her declared motivations (showing up cops, that she hates) and her tendency to get distracted-and possibly forget there are far bigger problems around.
- Kanako Oora in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei has this as her defining character trait. To her, everything else is somebody else's problem. Like, say, a huge pile of corpses in the classroom after one of Chiri's rampages. On the other hand, everybody calls her magnanimous for not judging you for your problems.
- ViVid Strike!: As is the case with most schools in real life, none of Rinne's classmates did anything to help her when she was being tormented by bullies out in the open. Some of them did give her sympathetic glances, but it was never anything more than that.
- Wonder Egg Priority:
- Ai used to have a case of this, as she backed out of filming her friend Koito's bullies because she got scared, and as she laments, she stood by and pretended not to see what Koito was going through. Now, she's trying to make up for this by protecting others.
- Symbolically, the Seeno Evils, the hench-creatures of the Wonder Killers, represent this, as they represent people who see cruelty going on but do nothing to stop it.
- If it doesn't involve his little brother Mokuba, his company KaibaCorp, his position as a duelist, defeating Yugi Muto, or owning the most powerful cards (particularly ones related to the Blue-Eyes White Dragon), this defines Seto Kaiba of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! to a T. But at some point after the series ends, he starts caring enough to devote a significant part of his vast fortune into creating Duel Academia, a school intended to deal with all the magical consequences of Duel Monsters. Thus setting the stage for Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! GX ironically shows Kaiba to still suffer from this, as he refuses to intervene in the ongoings of the school no matter how many times the teachers and students are imperiled, oftentimes by his own employees. The Out-of-Universe reason is because if he did, there wouldn't be a plot — when Kaibaman (a duel monster spirit based of Kaiba and use his deck) dueled Jaden/Judai, it was a complete Curb-Stomp Battle in the former's favor, and in Season Four Kaiba is shown to be the only citizen in Domino City that was capable of fighting off Trueman's invasion. Even ten years into the future he's the second strongest duelist in the world, and likely could handle any threat the main cast faces very easily.
